Enter your entry price, leverage, and maintenance margin. Find exactly how far the market needs to move before your position gets liquidated.
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×
Isolated margin mode. Use 1× for spot.
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Binance & Bybit BTC: 0.5%. Higher for altcoins.
Liquidation price
$54,300
9.5% move from entry
Distance to liq.
$5,700
Safety cushion
Narrow
How liquidation price is calculated
Liquidation price is the price at which a leveraged crypto position gets forcibly closed by the exchange. It is the point where your losses have consumed your initial margin, leaving the exchange at risk of absorbing the difference. Understanding this calculation before entering a position is not optional — it is the difference between a controlled loss and a catastrophic wipeout.
The formula for isolated margin uses your entry price, leverage, and the exchange's maintenance margin rate. For a long position: liquidation price equals entry multiplied by (1 minus 1/leverage plus maintenance margin/100). For a short position: entry multiplied by (1 plus 1/leverage minus maintenance margin/100). At 10× leverage with 0.5% maintenance margin on a $60,000 BTC long, this gives approximately $54,300 — a 9.5% adverse move.
Why leverage kills most retail traders
The mathematical reality of high leverage in crypto is brutal. Bitcoin's average daily volatility is roughly 3–4%. At 25× leverage, your liquidation price is approximately 3.5% from your entry. A single normal trading day can liquidate a 25× position. At 50×, any 2% move in the wrong direction ends the position. At 100×, you are effectively betting on the next 30-minute candle direction with your entire margin at stake.
Major exchanges offer up to 125× leverage on crypto futures. This exists to generate trading fees from the volume of retail accounts that get liquidated — not because it is a viable trading tool for real market participants. Professional crypto derivatives traders typically use 3–10× leverage and place their liquidation price 20–30% away from entry.
Isolated vs. cross margin
The choice between isolated and cross margin changes what gets liquidated, not whether liquidation happens. With isolated margin, your loss is capped at the margin you explicitly allocated to that position. With cross margin, the exchange pulls from your entire available balance to keep the position alive, potentially draining everything before closing it.
For traders holding multiple positions simultaneously, isolated margin is almost always preferable. It prevents one catastrophic trade from cascading into your entire book. This calculator uses the isolated margin formula — the most common and predictable scenario.
The stop loss must come before liquidation
The most important practical rule: your stop loss should always trigger at a price before your liquidation price. If your stop loss and liquidation price are within 1–2% of each other, you are using too much leverage for the trade setup you have chosen. Either widen your stop (which means reducing position size to maintain the same dollar risk), reduce leverage, or take a different trade.
Getting liquidated without a stop loss means you held a losing position all the way to zero margin. Getting stopped out means you took a controlled loss as planned. The first is a failure of risk management. The second is professional execution.
Liquidation happens when your losses on a leveraged position consume your entire margin (the collateral you deposited). At that point, the exchange forcibly closes your position at market price to prevent your balance from going negative. On isolated margin, only the margin allocated to that position is lost. On cross margin, the exchange can draw from your entire account balance.
What is maintenance margin and why does it matter?
Maintenance margin is the minimum margin ratio you must maintain to keep a position open. Once your margin falls below this threshold, liquidation is triggered — before you actually run out of funds. Binance and Bybit charge 0.5% maintenance margin on BTC perpetuals. For smaller altcoins, maintenance margins can be 1–2%, which means you get liquidated earlier relative to your initial margin.
How does leverage affect liquidation distance?
Higher leverage means your liquidation price is closer to your entry price. At 10× leverage, a 9–10% adverse move triggers liquidation. At 50× leverage, it takes only 2%. At 100× leverage, less than 1%. This is why high leverage is a transfer of money from impatient traders to patient market makers — any normal price fluctuation triggers liquidation at extreme leverage.
What is isolated margin vs. cross margin?
With isolated margin, the maximum you can lose is the margin you allocate to that specific position. With cross margin, the exchange can draw on your entire account balance to prevent liquidation. Cross margin reduces the chance of liquidation from a single position, but a losing position can drain your entire account before you notice. Isolated margin limits the damage — use it when holding multiple positions.
How far should my liquidation price be from entry?
A common guideline is to keep the liquidation price at least 15–20% away from your entry for positions you hold more than a few hours. For day trades, 8–10% may be acceptable depending on volatility. The key is that your stop loss should always trigger before liquidation — if your stop and liquidation price are close together, you are overleveraged for that setup.
Can I move my liquidation price after entering a position?
Yes. Adding more margin to a leveraged position (called "topping up" or "adding margin") increases your effective margin ratio and pushes the liquidation price further away. However, this is a dangerous practice because it often amounts to throwing good money after bad — most traders add margin on losing positions that continue to move against them.
Does the funding rate affect liquidation price?
Funding rate does not directly change your liquidation price. However, if you hold a position through multiple funding intervals and funding is paid out of your margin balance, your effective margin decreases, which can push liquidation closer. On high-leverage positions held for extended periods, accumulated funding costs can become a meaningful factor.
Is this calculator accurate for Binance and Bybit?
This calculator uses the simplified isolated margin formula accurate for most major crypto exchanges including Binance and Bybit for BTC and ETH perpetuals. For altcoins with higher maintenance margin tiers, or for cross-margin positions, the result may differ slightly. Always verify against the exchange's own liquidation price displayed on the position screen.